I'm pretty indifferent about the idea of PVP on BOH, even though I thought Eve Online was awesome (because it was all PVP).

But there are a handful of posts that mention PVP, and in some of them is the assertion that PVP and BOH don't mix. Why do people think that?

IMHO, if Venan could pull it off, and PVP made the game interesting, I would not mind it. To me, it is more of a technical problem. But it sounds like it might be a cultural issue. Is it? I'm curious what folks think. Like if it is a cultural issue, what kind of culture is it?

Bbbb wrote:This subject has been discussed many times. Just search the forum better and you can find the answers. Venan is well aware of the arguments on both sides.

Thanks for your advice. I think I did search the forum, and I suppose these discussions are submerged under topic headings that don't sound like this particular topic, or perhaps arising from topics related to changes in the game.

In any case, a link would be helpful if you have one! Even if your link is just to one instance where Venan has acknowledged the arguments on both sides which has given you, and probably lots of others, the assurance that the subject is closed--that would be nice too.

It looks more like "us vs monsters" game atm, but so what.. I remember when there were no guilds, and now it's impossible to imagine BOH without guilds.

An interesting thing is that many think of PvP very literally, like individual player vs individual player. It could be i. guild vs guild [or group vs. group], or ii. two guilds vs boss (the faster one to finish off the boss wins), or iii. one guild attacks the boss, while the other guild helps the boss, etc.etc. It sounds crazy, but, seriously..

I've been noticing more PVP posts lately, and fewer cries of opposition.

But I would like to hear from folks who are opposed to it as well as those who want it. I particularly want to know, in games with PVP, what is the thing that makes you not want to do it? Here are two observations that I have about the subject, one I liked and one I didn't:

1) On Eve Online, you were totally live, and every real player was a potential PVP target (and it was really up to your own assessment whether to engage or not). In large part, you generally could run away from players who were out to get you, or you could stay in high sec areas where the NPC police would protect you. I thought it was awesome because I was not being expected to fight anyone, and sometimes you could just sit back and watch an attack go down. Besides which, except in alliance controlled space, most players didn't want to fight you anyhow. They had a trick though to allow players to engage in PVP without the federation police blowing you up: join the same corp. You can always PVP within corp without penalty (except getting blown up by another player and losing whatever loot you happened to have on you at the time).

2) I play Blood Brothers that has a lot of PVP. It's a weird kind of PVP because it isn't live face-to-face--your opponent has no idea you're fighting them, and they get no penalties (that I can tell) for losing to you. I find it highly unsatisfactory, particularly because the point is to rank among other players, and there is no way I will ever rank given the amount of time I can spare to play. Again, you can decline the challenges, but it does you no good in terms of advancing through the game. In fact, the game has turned into a personal challenge to collect all the familiar types, and once I'm done, that'll be the end of that.

I would think that real-time PVP is near impossible to achieve with the way the game is currently made. It would take insane amount of server resources for second-to-second updates between Venan's server and our game platforms. I think it is more likely that PvP becomes a "race" towards a certain objective (more likely to be guild v guild in such instances), or if it's individuals v individuals, it would be based on a "dummy" of that character.

However if a "dummy" of a character is used, the AI controlling it has to be extremely smart; but I have earnest doubts about the ability of creating an AI so smart that it could mirror a real player's abilities to decide on what skills to use. So such a system may inherently be unfair, since it penalizes the player who is controlled via a "dummy" AI.

Lastly, potions and runes should be disallowed, especially if a "dummy" system is used (for obvious reasons that it would be patently unfair).

It would be most fantastic if we could have 2v2 or 3v3 fights between players, real-time; just like how we always see 2/3 creature cards on our screen and casting their skills and battling it out with us, it could be 2/3 player avatars on cards, with real-time skills being cast. But that would probably be just a fantasy.

Most problematic part of such a play style is that it may take ages to proceed since everyone has to make an input decision before all timers can move, and players within the teams will want to communicate with one another before they make their next move. Short of voice communication or sitting next to each other in real life, it would be an immensely painful chore to type to one another what the next move/strategy should be.

I look forward to Venan's creativity and hope they astound us once more.

TCG_japster wrote:I would think that real-time PVP is near impossible to achieve with the way the game is currently made. It would take insane amount of server resources for second-to-second updates between Venan's server and our game platforms. I think it is more likely that PvP becomes a "race" towards a certain objective (more likely to be guild v guild in such instances), or if it's individuals v individuals, it would be based on a "dummy" of that character.

However if a "dummy" of a character is used, the AI controlling it has to be extremely smart; but I have earnest doubts about the ability of creating an AI so smart that it could mirror a real player's abilities to decide on what skills to use. So such a system may inherently be unfair, since it penalizes the player who is controlled via a "dummy" AI.

Lastly, potions and runes should be disallowed, especially if a "dummy" system is used (for obvious reasons that it would be patently unfair).

It would be most fantastic if we could have 2v2 or 3v3 fights between players, real-time; just like how we always see 2/3 creature cards on our screen and casting their skills and battling it out with us, it could be 2/3 player avatars on cards, with real-time skills being cast. But that would probably be just a fantasy.

Most problematic part of such a play style is that it may take ages to proceed since everyone has to make an input decision before all timers can move, and players within the teams will want to communicate with one another before they make their next move. Short of voice communication or sitting next to each other in real life, it would be an immensely painful chore to type to one another what the next move/strategy should be.

I look forward to Venan's creativity and hope they astound us once more.

IMHO, right now is the right time to fantasize. I would rather dream big than get stumped over potentially imaginary technical issues. Can't forget Moore's Law! Why limit ourselves? We're just talking after all. I imagine Venan has enough black hats to knock down the impossible that they don't need us to do it for them.

Besides, I would think it would be good to know not only what we fantasize about, but what would turn us off as a player base.

We should have a PVP window (either another tab in the player portrait in the upper left corner or can be accessed via an arena somewhere in the map). Either way it would have the following:

1. Tick boxes for all the player character's skills

2. An equipment tab similar to the one found in the character portrait

As real time fighting is going to be quite hard and as japster said a dummy AI representing the player would definitely not be good enough I propose some degree of personalized attacks and defences.

In the character skills tick boxes what you need to do is tick the skills that you first want to use in combat. The choice is up to you whether you want to attack or cast defensive buffs. Naturally the skills wherein you have no points would be blacked out.

The equipment tab would further be divided into 3 tabs. One tab each for a justicar, warmage or shadow walker opponent. You can customize your gear and gems to tailor fit against each opponent. Would you go for all out offence or prefer to be a defensive tank.

There would be might brackets so that high might players would not just pound lower mights into the dust. This might be the hard part to decide due to the differences among the 3 characters.

I'm totally against any form of losing silvers due to arena losses. For me you should just earn PVP points for bragging rights.

To add, I think BOTH Players fighting should have their characters simulated in the battle to be fair. Using Cavalier's method, which is prefered I believe, both players woul dhave their favorite actions in order and the battle woudl start, for the attacker to watch, and maybe the defender could watch it as well in an attachment of a mail that notifies them of the attack.

Anyway, if BOTH are not simulated, then the attacker would have an advantage since they could react to dodges and blocks and change up their actions whereas the defender couldn't.

Using this system, other things could be explanded in the game:

1. We could have a Champion of the Arena if an Arena was added, and maybe a reward for every block of time that the Champion spot is held, and whoever defeats the Champion has their toon saved as the next Champion.

2. Guild Battles. We could have huge GvG battles where all saved toons fight each other maybe 3 at a time, starting with the highest mights, and as toons are defeated the next highest might comes into the battle, and this is continued until one guild is left standing. We could have different sections on the map that Guilds could control, and say that a guild can only control one section at a time, and they have to give up one section to attempt to take another. Each section could give a guild different rewards over a block of time like a special favor or reward in valor/hero tokens/or silver or something. Imagine you guild owning Glenford Castle? or Fellmarsh...lol

Also it cropped up to me, building on Cavalier's idea of "tick boxes". If anybody has played ff12, they use a gambit system for combat. Basically it allows us to "program" characters to respond and cast spells in certain orders and targets based on conditions.

That may give us more greater AI control and customization over the fights even if we cannot control our characters in real-time.